Italiano
As a young child in her home town of Turin, Clara Garesio learnt how to mould clay and create beautiful drawings even before enrolling at the school of art and ceramics. Having completed her studies she won the Faenza national ceramics competition and, by 1956, she was working on decorated majolica plates for the Shah of Persia as well as running the ceramic workshops in a state school. By the 60’s and 70’s she had become the undisputed champion of ceramic art and won numerous awards and recognitions. In 1960 she came toNaples(where she has now lived for over 40 years with the Neapolitan sculptor Giuseppe Pirozzi) and founded the Capodimonte Porcelain Institute (now the Caselli Institute) and channelled all her energies into this work. In the late 1950’s, Clara Garesio created the ‘ceramic design table’ and her sculptures and vases were unique in their genre, with designs that followed the artistic trends of the time, stylisations inspired by abstract models or by Picasso, brought up to date by modern, vivid paints, as can be seen in her enamelled vases from this period. [charme-gallery]At first her work resembles that of theschoolofWeimar, where creativity and rationality are skilfully blended, but her work bears strong signs of modernity in which elegance is suffused with explosive colour. This is particularly true of her vases, on whose surfaces her great painting skills come to the fore in a style not usually associated with ceramic design, and it is thanks to Clara Garesio that ceramics can shrugs off the ‘lesser art’ label typically affixed to hand-crafted products. This reserved, sensitive and romantic artist speaks little of her art and is almost reluctant to let people see her works. Many female artists are loath to speak about the private sphere and the compromises made between family life and their creative work, but Clara Garesio is aware and proud of her femininity, her role as a woman, mother, lover and companion, a role that she has combined perfectly with her artistic life for over 50 years in her quest to create new inroads for art into ceramics.[charme-gallery]
